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China official 'drowned' by interrogators

Updated
Wed Sep 04 19:26:13 EST 2013

A Chinese official was allegedly drowned by investigators during interrogation to extort a confession to corruption.

Chinese state media reports that according to prosecution documents, Yu Qiyi was stripped naked and held down by graft investigators in a bathtub full of "icy water" several times after his questioning failed to produce satisfactory answers.

The report in the Beijing Times details the investigators only stopped when Yu, the chief engineer of a state-owned company in the eastern city of Wenzhou, stopped struggling.

He was taken to hospital and died a few hours later.

The six investigators have been charged with intentional injury, the report said.

"Yu Qiyi was a strong man before he was detained but was skinny when he died," the dead man's wife Wu Qian was quoted as saying by the newspaper.

"He was bruised internally and externally during the 38 days (in detention). He must have been tortured in other ways besides the drowning exposed by the prosecution," she said.

A post-mortem showed he had been made to "imbibe liquids" that caused pulmonary dysfunction and eventually his death, according to a photograph of a forensic document carried by the newspaper.

Relatives also reportedly found multiple bruises on his body after his death in April.

Yu had been detained since early March over suspected wrongdoings in a land deal.